New Design and Overall Changes
RSS Readers — Come check out the new design!
It’s been a couple months, eh? Oh well. One thing I’ve always said is after a long time without posting to try and avoid referencing it. So I won’t.
That being said, the reason I didn’t write anything since early April was due to a lack of ideas and the will to write them. A year ago I was posting twice a day and going strong, but after a while I guess I had a dip in the passion.
The New Design
I’ve always had troubles designing for myself in a way that represents my own style. It seems odd that I can put a personal touch on a design for someone else more than on my own site. I probably just over think it to the point where I doubt the design.
So, with this I get across a few things that I like to have in a design. It’s simple, linear and sits on somewhat of a grid. Also, there isn’t any blue. Hard to believe for me, but the last couple things I’ve designed have been devoid of blue. I’ve been trying to put a brown/orange/white scheme together for a while now, and finally it got developed far enough where I can actually use it.
I wouldn’t call this my best work, or even the best design I’ve made for this site (one in particular that will never get developed comes to mind- too much going on in there), but it suits my cause.
Overall Changes
I’m going to continue writing about web design, WordPress and all the other things I was focusing on before. I have a bunch of new WordPress stuff I worked into this theme that I’ll write up tutorials on, but I’ll touch on that later.
I didn’t post for ages because I didn’t have anything write about web design. Considering that’s not my only interest, I’m going to write about pretty well whatever I want now. I’m going to clean up the categories and try to keep them around 10.
This will make the whole site more personal in a way, but at the same time more interesting because the focus will constantly shift.
Another reason I couldn’t put fingers to keyboard early on in the ‘drought‘ had to do with my infatuation for numbers/statistics. Seeing everything going up like I was trying to make it is a good feeling, but website statistics are eternally unreliable. Something I should have learned years ago when I got my first hit on a free host, but inevitably did not.
A couple months of not checking stats (actually took a while for me to stop) and I built up a solid wall of apathy. Hopefully it holds.
Nifty Things
While developing this theme I created some extra features which will go totally unused, but it was a good learning experience for me to do it. Before I was doing my own WordPress themes I had coded my own blogs and tutorial sites, so I was fairly proficient with PHP.
Over a year and a half of exclusively developing on WordPress has dwindled that. But, I did get to use some of those old skills in creating these new features. “Features” is a little powerful, actually.
These all basically revolve around being logged in, so you’ll have to sign up for my blog to see these.
- Login Overlay. I made an overlay using a modified Lightbox script I found and some of my own code to make a login form overlay. I did this because I wanted to take out the inconvenience of logging into WordPress if you want to comment (and have an account).
- See all your comments on a page and where you posted them. This is a logged in only thing, though.
That’s actually it. Anti-climatic, eh? Seemed like more as I was coding them. But it was fun (yes, fun) for me to write my own MySQL queries again without using query_posts().
That was a bit wordy. I’ll work some of the new blockquotes and stuff in the future 
Leave a comment
Brady Valentino
August 21st, 2008 at 3:58 PM
Congrats on the new design Connor, I love it.
Mark Cole
August 21st, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Nice design. I love it. However something seems to be up with your register… I’ve tried to register twice and I haven’t received the email.
Connor Wilson
August 21st, 2008 at 7:36 PM
@Mark — Are you sure? I got an email saying you registered. If the problem persists I’ll manually make you an account (or just set a password) so you can git in there.
Alex Fraiser
August 21st, 2008 at 7:43 PM
The design is pretty nice, good work on it. I like the login a lot too, that’s a pretty good idea.
Andre Ward
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:17 PM
The design is fantastic Connor, I’m really digging the colors and the layout. I’ve been stalking you (yes, I’m that honest) on Twitter to see if you were going to update the blog any time soon and you finally did. I’m looking forward to reading your future posts!
Connor Wilson
August 23rd, 2008 at 1:42 AM
@Andre — I think if following someone on Twitter was stalking about… 100% of Twitter users would be in some trouble.
Plus, the way I see it, I advertise my Twitter account basically, so if I attract some legitimate stalkers- I might as well have been asking for it.
Thanks for the kinds words, guys.
Zach Kollegger
August 23rd, 2008 at 1:20 PM
Awesome new design, Connor. Looks great. The colors really work, and that login is cool. Great work.
Brad
August 24th, 2008 at 1:42 AM
Loving the new design, and the fact that you’re updating now
Annie Maloney
August 30th, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Connor, I think the new design is very nice. Clean and crisp! Nothing too fancy but still very east on the eyes. Less is definately more these days….
hostsniper
September 1st, 2008 at 2:11 AM
nice design !
xcvz
September 12th, 2008 at 3:09 PM
xzcbzcbxb
mohan
October 6th, 2008 at 10:38 AM
send me
K Gift
October 11th, 2008 at 12:01 PM
Well all I can say is the whole layout of your blog really outdoes the others that I look at regularily. I wish people would spend more time or money in making out experience better. Its like walking into a shop that has not been painted or cleaned in years.
Your design is simple, to the point and has heart, I love it. Enjoy.
diseno.web.vizcaya
October 26th, 2008 at 3:01 PM
Great design, man. I like it a lot.
Armen Shirvanian
November 17th, 2008 at 10:37 PM
That line you mention in this post in that you didn’t write anything for a while up to this because you didn’t have anything to write about web design is refreshing to hear of, as most would keep writing material that was not up to their regular level just to keep the process going. It is hard to say which method would come out with better results, but readers are probably more glad to see relevant material, as opposed to a continuous amount of generic material.
Scrapbooking
November 24th, 2008 at 5:10 AM
Best thing about this design is it looks bespoke - I mean, it doesn’t look like a WP blog even though it is - good job.
Petshop
November 27th, 2008 at 4:13 AM
thanks
Tom
November 30th, 2008 at 9:25 AM
interesting site it really learns me a lot.
Tom
November 30th, 2008 at 9:26 AM
thanks for the information i will apply that.
Tom
December 5th, 2008 at 10:08 AM
great post i really like that.
Marble Host
December 15th, 2008 at 6:01 AM
Hi,
The trend of design has been changing in regular interval, Since from ancient sculpture itself.
Those who accept the change will win the race & those who stick to old are lagged behind by the world.
http://www.marblehost.com
test
December 16th, 2008 at 5:44 PM
How?
Vitaliy Syromyatnikov
January 5th, 2009 at 5:53 AM
Cool design!
Happy New Year!
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